


Last Chances

by pirategirljack



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Kiss, character ceasing to exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 18:08:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5058682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I had a thought and it's been plaguing me and I had to write it out. It's way too long until the second season gets here, and the preview for it is perpetually killing me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Chances

They weren’t on the best of terms right then, but in that moment, when the shiver ran through his body, dragging the familiar pain of time distortion after it, he didn’t give two flying fucks about terms. All he knew was that something was happening, it wasn’t a splinter but was related to it, and Cassie was right there before him.

And he was going to lose her.

He’d spent weeks, months, trying to save her when this all started. He was sure that she was the key, and maybe she was. Maybe she still is. But maybe she was someone else’s key. Jones had gotten him to do this by telling him he’d atone for all his sins and then cease to exist, just blink out of existence. He’d grow up in a normal world and be a normal person who had never done the things he’d done.

He was always going to drop out of reality.

But he’d sort of started to think that maybe he was just stranded here, that he could live like a normal person anyway, without having to stop being himself first.

He didn’t like that he’d allowed himself that hope. Now, it was cracking.

“I can feel it,” he said, half looking at his hands, half holding them up to show her, to beg her. He didn’t know what he was begging for. Nothing, maybe. Everything.

“Feel what?” She’d been angry a moment ago, but now she looked scared. He could see the panic creeping up on her. The loss.

His loss.

Fuck. She still cared.

A spasm across his chest, down his arms. “It’s not a splinter. It’s worse. You did it Cass, you changed something. I’m going.”

“No.”

He tried to smile, but the pain was getting worse, coming in waves. Already, he couldn’t feel his feet. He’d seen a movie while he was here, where the kid started fading away; he wondered if he was fading. If he was, the movie lied about how much that sort of thing hurt.

“Cole. We’re not done.”

“Too late.”

“Cole.” How did she manage to get so much meaning into his name? No one ever said it the way she said it.

“It was always gonna go like this.” He wrapped his hands around her shoulders, gentle despite the pain. She was so small under her Scav clothes. “I just hoped…”

“Hoped what?”

“That you wouldn’t know. That my last act wouldn’t be hurting you.”

“There’s no way I’d let you cease to exist without saying goodbye. Don’t you dare.” She was trying to smile, but she was crying now, and even then, in that muddle of emotions, there was that flash of fierceness in her eyes, that iron will that he loved.

That he loved.

This was going too fast.

“It’s soon. God, Cassie, I’m sorry. For everything. But I’m still glad I got to know you.”

And then, all at once, the moment was right, the moment he didn’t know he has been waiting for since they met. His last chance. He kissed her. It was easy, like he’d always been kissing her, like he wasn’t even afraid and she wasn’t startled, like the world wasn’t ending. And, miracle of miracles, she kissed him back. 

Her arms moved to hold onto him, her fingers wrapping around his clothes.

He moved one hand to her face, her hair soft and bright on his rough fingertips.

And then there was nothing.

\--

Cassie gasped when he disappeared. She’d never been touching him when it happened before, but she’d been close enough to know that this felt different. Final. Complete. She knew, now, what it was like to splinter, and why they called it that when it happened, and this was not a splinter, just as he’d said.

She lowered her hands slowly, and squeezed her lips and her eyes shut for several long heartbeats, committing these last moments to memory.

When she opened her eyes again, she spoke to everyone who had seen this happen. “We’re getting him back. I don’t care how, I don’t care what you think about it, but he saved me more times that I can count, and I’m not leaving him dead.”


End file.
